04/ 15/ 2002
It's a common experience that when small businesses decide to develop their online presence, they try to do everything themselves initially. From designing and developing the site, to the evolution of maintenance and updating the site's content to initial and ongoing marketing, the entire process requires expertise and can be enormously time consuming. Many companies ultimately turn to professionals who specialize in the field, working with them to design and implement the site, to market, and to handle all necessary updating of material.
This overall process can be expensive, putting the use of a professional out of reach of many small businesses. In today's and next week's Workshops, Jeffrey Moses offers some suggestions for finding and choosing a Web site development pro who fits your budget.
Web site developers come in all shapes and sizes -- from large firms that work with Fortune 1000 companies to small shops that design, develop and maintain the marketing of sites for local retailers and start-up entrepreneurs who are on a tight budget. If this latter category describes your company, you can start by asking businesses in your area if they have a site. Get a list of those that do, then visit the sites to examine their quality. When you see something that resonates with you, you can call the site developers and speak with them directly about developing a Web site for you.
When you examine a Web site to analyze its quality, you're looking for certain specific features:
- Overall initial graphic appearance of the home page. Is it well designed? Do the graphics download quickly? Are all side bars logical and descriptive. Is the text readable? Do you think you would be pleased with a similar design for your own site?
- Is the overall layout and content of the site described clearly on the home page, or is the site layout confusing? Does the overall layout seem complete, or are there gaps in the site's information -- i.e, are any important features such as product description, ordering information, or company profile missing?
- Are navigation links to other pages in the site described effectively -- in other words, do you know approximately what subject you're going to find on a page when you click on its link? What is the overall "navigation quality" of the site -- do you think that readers would be able to find the information they need quickly and easily, or might they be turned off by an illogical or hard-to-understand system of navigation through the site?
- Are links to affiliates seamless and quick?
- Are individual information pages laid out so that readers can easily navigate through text to find what they need?
- Is the quality of all photos excellent, good, fair, or poor? How quickly do these photos download? Are certain pages of the site too slow, or does the site as a whole have a good flow to it?
- Are there any refinements on the site that you find especially attractive? These may include well-designed side bars, innovative uses of graphics or pictures (including animated graphics), or special ways that make using the site easy for visitors?
When you find a site that you like, talk with the business that owns the site and ask how easy or difficult the development firm was to work with. Was the firm flexible, creative, and receptive to ideas? Or did it rigidly insist on doing things its own way, even at the expense of satisfying the customer? Try to find out how much the design and development of the site cost, and how long the entire process took.
Many sites contain a link to the home page of the site developer. Click on these links and look at the developer's own home page, asking yourself all the questions listed above. The developer's home page may contain links to other sites the developer has worked on. Visit as many of these as possible, evaluating each site to get a feel for how well the developer could meet your needs.
Next week's Workshop continues this discussion by describing the areas of expertise your site developer should have, and how to evaluate charges for the various activities the developer will be carrying out for you.
workshop.technology.thur
10.5.00
